I like this definition of a hymn:

Hymnologist Erik Routley once defined hymns as “songs for unmusical people to sing together . . . [and] such poetry as unliterary people can utter together.” At first, this might seem to exult in the lack of artistry. But Routley was actually writing to appreciate the remarkable skill of poets and musicians who accept the challenge to be both profound and accessible at the same time, which is a lot more difficult than simply being one or the other. While there is a kind of beauty in a carefully-honed studio recording, there is another kind of beauty -– an often remarkable and haunting beauty -– in the sound of a congregation of mostly unmusical people singing together.”

- John Witvliet, For the Beauty of the Church

Some words to pause amid life’s fleeting pursuits,and reflect beyond the grave.

Sometimes amid the hurry, toil and strife,
The claims, the urgencies, the whirl of life;
The soul, perhaps in silence of the night —
Has flashes — transient intervals of light.

When things to come, without a shade of doubt.
In terrible reality stand out;
These lucid moments suddenly present
A glance of truth, as tho’ the heavens were rent;

And thro’ the chasm of pure celestial light,
The future breaks upon the startled sight:
Life’s vain pursuits, and Time’s advancing pace,
Appear with death-bed clearness face to face;

And immortality’s expanse sublime,
In just proportion to the speck of time:
While Death, uprising from the silent shades,
Shows his dark outline ere the vision fades;
In strong relief against the blazing sky,
Appears the shadow as it passes by;

And though o’erwhelming to the dazzled brain,
These are the moments when the mind is sane:
For then a hope of heaven, a Saviour’s Cross,
Seem what they are, and all things else but loss.

Oh! to be ready — ready for that day.
Would we not give earth’s fairest toys away?
Alas! how soon its interests cloud the view.
Rush in, and plunge us in the world anew.

- Jane Taylor, The Invalid’s Hymn Book (ed. Harriet Kierman, 1854), xxxvi.

We first came across the song while looking for tutorials on how to back wrap our baby. As you can see in the video, we managed to work out how to do it!

Can’t say the lyrics to this Dent May song are that meaningful, but it is a very catchy ukulele riff…

The lyrics:

Before you close your eyes to sleep
I have a promise still to keep
As I hold you in my arms
I pray your little frame grows strong
And that faith takes hops while you are young
This is my prayer for you

Hold my hand, I’ll teach you the way to go
Through the joys, through the years
The journey of these years
May you trust Him till the end
May you trust Him in the end

This world is not as it should be
But the Saviour opens eyes to see
All that’s beautiful and true
Oh may His light fill all you are
And the jewel of wisdom crowns your heart
This is my prayer for you

Hold my hand, I’ll teach you the way to go
Through the joys, through the tears
The journey of these years
He is with is till the end
He is faithful till the end

You’ll travel where my arms won’t reach
As the road will rise and lead your feet
On a journey of your own
May my mistakes to hinder you
But His grace remain and guide you through
This is my prayer for you

Take His hand and go where He calls you to
And whatever comes, seek Him
With all your heart
This will be my prayer for you

Father hear my ceaseless prayer
Oh keep her in your care

Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Fionan de Barra; © 2012 Gettymusic and Fionan de Barra (adm. by MusicServices.org)

The song is from their latest album, Hymns for the Christian Life.

Andrew Peterson’s “You Came So Close” has lyrics describing someone’s marriage breaking apart through adultery, but then somehow holding together. Some of the lyrics:

You could no more kill the darkness
Than you could raise the sun
And the sky was cold and black
Like the barrel of a gun

And I remember the tremble
In the words you spoke
As you balanced there on the brink
At the end of your rope

You came so close to letting go

And you knew she would hate you
She would kick you out
You’d been lying in the bed that you made
When you broke your vow

Then you woke in the wasteland
Of the truth you told
And you turned to see she stayed,
She was bright as a band of gold

You came so close to letting go

In an old interview, he describes the story of difficult grace behind the song:

The verses came out of hard conversations with friends of mine who were going through dark nights of the souls – suicidal thoughts and another guy whose marriage was falling apart. He had been cheating on his wife and spiritually speaking was as dead as he could be. He decided that whenever his wife found out that he would have his bags packed. She confronted him; of course it was ugly. He stood there waiting for her to kick him out and she didn’t. In this moment of incredible grace, she said, “I don’t want you to leave. I want to figure this out. You’re my husband. I love you.” That was so jarring to him, because he couldn’t fathom that she would ever want him to stay. It woke him up. Whatever it was that was in him that wanted to quit, it gave him a ray of hope that maybe he was loveable. Lo and behold, they’re still married. That story renewed my faith that there’s never reason to give up hope. The Lord can do anything. How many times has He proven this ability to take all of this darkness and to turn it inside out and turn it into this bright light.

I was watching the commentary on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and one of the commenters said that despair is not just a sin theologically speaking. Despair is also just a mistake. Despair assumes you know the end of the story, that you can see something that you can’t. My friends in that moment could not forsee a good ending to their stories, but there was still cause for hope. We don’t know how the story will end.

What an example of Christ-like commitment to his church, even in the midst of terrible sin and sorrow.

The song is on Andrew Peterson’s “Counting Stars” album. Worth every dollar.

Yet as I cradled our 1 year old daughter this morning after breakfast, she became unexpectedly still. She stared up, occasionally lifting her doll-like finger up to gently trace my lips, as God etched the moment into my memory.

It made me think back to the first time Cheryl and I saw her. That morning of hustle and intensity, of prayer and pressure, then hearing Eden’s almost other-worldly cry as she entered the world (2:08pm). After the checks, our midwife quickly placed Eden onto Cheryl for skin-to-skin contact.

Then, she became unexpectedly still, calm, occasionally shuffling towards the face of her mother. Soft footsteps in the corridor broke the silence once or twice, as God gently etched the moment into my memory.

We were reminded by a dear friend last night that a child’s birthday isn’t just a celebration for the child (what would she even remember now?), but also a time of rejoicing for the parents to reflect on the joys and the sorrows in the year gone by, and on God’s faithfulness and mercy towards them.

Happy birthday my dear Eden. If blogs are still around when you’re old enough to read this, may this be a testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, who has sustained and fathered you better than I ever could, every day of your life. Our prayer for you remains that you would be found clinging to Christ alone for everything on your last birthday.

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You’ll travel where my arms won’t reach
As the road will rise and lead your feet
On a journey of your own
May my mistakes to hinder you
But His grace remain and guide you through
This is my prayer for you…

“A Mother’s Prayer” by Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Fionan de Barra; © 2012 Gettymusic and Fionan de Barra

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“My job is to bring light into darkness by raising my children in the Lord” – Jamie Peterson, homemaker, when asked about her job

Alexander Graham Bell’s recorded voice heard 130 years on – This is a neat article showing how scientists coaxed his voice recording out of a wax-covered cardboard disc.

The Book That Isn’t Really There: Digital Texts, Declining Discipleship – John Bombaro makes a strong case for favouring the physical book over the digital. The “Reasons Why” section is very helpful. He says:

When we accommodate our Bible reading practices to the age of digital texts and the Internet, we may only be contributing to the biblical illiteracy, doctrinal ignorance, and sacramental neglect of the contemporary church.

I think he oversteps a bit with his enthusiasm for the physical text of Scripture (which in its earliest days due to lack of copies would have been shared verbally), but it’s food for thought.

I’m Back After Being Offline for A Year – What I found most interesting about Paul Miller’s account of  unplugging from the Internet for a year. Initially it uncluttered his head, improved his attention span, and more socially aware. But then he learned how  to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet, and replaced them with new offline vices (video games, social isolation etc). It’s a riveting read, and made me ponder on how prone my own heart would be to replace one obsession or vice with another.

The Decline of Western Civilization, 140 characters at a time – Matt LaBash really doesn’t like Twitter: the way it turns people into self-promotors, the fact that the content of most tweets are meaningless. Let him make his (slightly rant-like) case to you. (HT: Justin Taylor)

Google Glass Explorer Teaches Physics at CERN – This is a neat way to use Google Glass (the feel good music helps too doesn’t it…)

Technology difference in 20 years – This Reddit user-submitted photo shows the difference between 1993 and 2013. (HT: AppleInsider)

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by Mike Cosper

Genre: Christian ministry / worship

Size: 223 pages. Just 10 chapters and 3 Appendices. I read through the whole thing in 2 days, and again more slowly over the course of several weeks.

What’s the big idea: The gospel is all about worship – once broken by sin – restored in Jesus. Worship, whether scattered or gathered, is all about rehearsing the gospel story, and being shaped by it.

Amazingly Mike starts not by defining worship. Instead, for the first 4 chapters he walks the reader through how the Bible describes worship – from Eden, the wilderness, in Israel, and then in Jesus (biblical theology).

Chapter 5 is the clincher where Mike unpacks the “Worship 1-2-3″ paradigm he uses to summarise what worship means for the local church (first described in this interview). Basically, worship has one object (the Triune God), two contexts (gathered and scattered), and three audiences (God himself, the gathered church, and the watching world). With this paradigm, Mike shows how many of our disagreements about worship comes from overemphasising one of these aspects. For example:

You’ll find that many of the heated battles of the worship wars erupt when these categories get confused. For instance, the well-intentioned seeker-sensitive movement seems to have lost sight of the church as an audience in worship (and a crucial one). Those who would rather lie in bed and watch The Masters on Sunday have lost sight of the call to gather with God’s church. Those who compartmentalize their “church” life from their hellish “secular” life forget that they are living sacrifices, and all of life is an act of worship. (p.86)

Chapters 6-8 focuses more on defining and fleshing out gathered worship as spiritual formation, as historically rooted in the story of the church, as an opportunity to rehearse the gospel story (he terms it “rhythms of grace”, hence the title). Chapters 9-10 address singing as worship, and the pastoral responsibility of planning and leading worship.

The appendices are also helpful as they include sample service orders from a few different churches, a list of recommended resources, and a discussion about audio/sound engineering in gathered worship (with a rocket of an anecdote in it!).

Easy to read? Yes for me. Mike writes creatively, and spins wonderful prose throughout the book to describe and explain the nature of true worship, and to answer questions about it.

If you’re not a worship leader or church musician some of the terms and references may be a bit new, as Mike assumes the reader is aware of things like “worship wars” and other in-house concepts. But he does try to explain each new term as it comes up, and his storytelling style is definitely easier to digest than the more academic styles of Bryan Chappell, DA Carson and David Peterson.

What I appreciated: I finished this book loving Jesus – our true worship leader – more, and inspired to press on in retelling the gospel story when we gather as a church.

Reading the first four chapters of the book is biblical theology at its breathtaking best, imaginatively told and left me (numerous times) grateful for God’s redemptive plan throughout history. If that’s where the book ended, it would already have been a worthwhile read!

When tackling more contentious issues of musical style, sound, vision etc. Mike has a gracious tone coupled with a rapier wit that leaves you embarrassed to disagree with him, and appreciative of the wisdom he’s curated from many helpful thinkers. I particularly appreciated:

• his great explanation of John 4:24′s worship in Spirit and in Truth”
• his critique of the Temple Model of worship planning (leading people into the throne room of God in music)
• his appeal for worship planning and leading to be seen as a pastoral task.
• his appeal for repetition and using non-singing elements in gathered worship (e.g. prayers, creeds, readings)

Most churches lack any real theology for worship, and most church leaders don’t know why the church is gathering, and what the goal is. Mike gives a concise yet thorough primer, rooted in Scripture and history, to answer all this. He doesn’t answer every question in-depth, and you don’t get a stand-alone, one-sentence definition of worship. But after reading this book you’ll definitely understand worship from a more biblical, gospel-centred, historically-rooted and theologically grounded perspective.

Who I’d recommend it to: Anyone remotely interested in what we should do when we gather as Christians, especially worship leaders. This is one of those 10 out of 10 books that I wish I had read when I first started out serving in music ministry. I’d rate it even higher than books like Worship Matters and Worship by the Book, just because I think it’s a more accessible read and is so gospel-saturated.

Notable quotes: So many to choose from (I’ve highlighted over 100 and counting…). Here’s some of my favourites:

The story of worship as told in the Bible defines worship in a radically different and surprising way. It’s a story that surprises us because we discover that it doesn’t primarily feature us. The star of the story is God, who is at the center of all worship but is also at its origins in history and its origins in our hearts. The story of worship (like the story of the gospel) is all about God.

The story of God and Israel is the story of God and us. The bleary hope sung by the patriarchs became a tearful slave song in Egypt, and in the deserts on the other side of the Red Sea another movement of the song began. “God lives with Israel” was the title of the movement. Its rhythms were carved into the flesh of lambs and goats, punctuated by a river of blood flowing out of the temple and shouts of “glory, hallelujah” as the divine presence filled the tabernacle.

Just wonderful phrases there.

Like the beautiful movement of Psalm 22, the longing of the patriarchs, the weary blues of the wilderness, and the tear-filled lament of the exiles find themselves resolving into a glorious celebration hymn in the life, work, and song of Jesus. That’s the story of worship: God creates, sin corrupts, but Christ redeems. And all of us get to sing along.

On gathered worship:

Harold Best puts it like this: “We do not go to church to worship. But as continuing worshipers, we gather ourselves together to continue our worship but now in the company of brothers and sisters.”

“Speaking the truth in love” is not so much about interpersonal boldness as it is about a community that shares a confession, a unified expression of faith in the God who saved them. The gathered body teaches the Word and proclaims it together; we speak the truth in love as we sing, read the Scriptures, and remember the gospel together.

…the gathering is unique not as an encounter with God (it is that, though God’s presence is a constantly available comfort and help to the Christian); rather it’s unique because it is an encounter with the people of God, filled with the Spirit of God, spurring one another along in the mission of God. Christ in me meets Christ in you.

We gather because we have work to do. Ekklēsia emphasizes the work of the people. We gather to do our work, which is to say, we gather to remember, to encourage, and to spur one another on.

On musical styles and preferences:

So let’s all acknowledge this fact: for better or worse, our worship, regardless of our tradition or musical style or culture, is shaping the hearts and minds of our congregations. We are always teaching, shaping, and painting a picture of what the Christian life looks like. It’s in this light that we should evaluate our gatherings. What are we saying about “normal” Christianity? How do our services reflect the way the gospel changes our perspective on the world? What are we saying to those who suffer? To the poor? The rich? Those who are like us? Those who are unlike us?

My friend Isaac Wardell… asks whether we think of gathered worship as being more like a concert hall or a banquet hall. If it’s a concert hall, we show up as passive observers and critics, eager to have the itches of our preferences and felt needs scratched. A banquet hall, by contrast, is a communal gathering. We come hungry and in community, ready to participate and share the experience with one another.

On worship wars:

Whoever dubbed the debate over musical style a “worship war” failed to realize that worship is always a war. The declaration that there is one God, that his name is Jesus, and that he has died, has risen, and will come again is an all-out assault on the saviors extended at every level of culture around us.

Every hymn of praise is a little anti-idolatry campaign. . . . When we sing “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,” we are also saying “Down with the gods from whom no blessings flow.”

Today, when many worship services are reduced to preaching and music, it becomes very easy to equate music with worship—and that’s a dangerous slope to park your car on. If music is worship, then when you mess with someone’s musical preferences, you threaten their access to God. No wonder the debates become so heated.

We need to remember that the hymn tradition, with its strict melodies and unity of voice, is but one stream of congregational song. There are other cultural traditions and other ways of participating in singing with the church.

The rock ensemble is part and parcel of our culture. It’s how people celebrate, and I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. So go ahead and use it, but don’t let it rule the gathering. Pull the band out for a song or two, leave choruses open so that voices can be heard. Train your musicians to restrain, restrain, restrain. If your church isn’t singing, you’re doing it wrong.

Verdict: Must read for pastors, worship leaders, musicians, anyone involved on Sunday morning. Good to read for all Christians.

Click here to grab a copy.

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